Friday, February 13, 2009

Realism

a. Realistic art is art that someone can clearly recognize exactly what it is supposed to be. It is rendered to look as if you were looking at the actual thing rather than a representation of it.

b. Plato views good art as being beautiful and having unity. Beauty to him consists of the human body and the 'soul' of that body. It is something that shows reality. Physical beauty is most important and other beautiful things come from good moral character. Art to him should be fine and graceful. His views stem from his worry about the effect art has on people and if they enjoy too many fictional imitations it will effect their daily living. He thinks art should be realistic so that someones moral character is not tested.

c. Plato can somewhat agree with some of Koon's artwork. Koon makes work that represents real life things, but he doesn't make them an exact copy. Because their scale is very large and the texture and color aren't realistic, Plato would not approve. Some of Koon's 'pornographic' art would probably go against Plato's view about moral character, but it would be hard for him to deny the beauty and realism of the figures. Some of Koon's other work was made from him delighting in the glory of ugliness. Plato would have problems with this because to him, art should be beautiful, and he doesn't find beauty in ugliness.

d. Aristotle has similar views on good art as Plato; he accepts realism, and believes that good art comes from truth and beauty in things imitated by nature. Aristotle believes art is imitation and whether that means representing something exactly how it looks, or representing it how someone feels it should look doesn't matter. Good art engages the viewer's attention and makes them think about the work.

e. I don't personally think that obsene art is a contradiction of terms because it has characteristics that would fit in different definitions of art. I think obsene art is more interesting because it shows things that arent necissarily natural, and things that you don't see every day. It grabs your attention and causes you to think deeply about the piece.

f. Depending on the image I would have to determine which is more obsene. To a very conservative person, sexual images would be more obsene. In today's world I feel like sex is a more open subject and people don't see it as obsene as it might have been years ago. Depending on where you live, things like violence, poverty, wealth, or sickness might be obsene if you never see those types of things, but if you live in an area where it happens more often, it wouldn't bother them so much. I can't determine exactly which would be more obsene, it just depends on what is shown and how it is shown.

g. I think Linda Bond's work relates to my piece I'm doing for this project more so in the sense of style. Mine is a portrait made from graphite pencils, and it looks realistic. Linda's work is done with different mediums but the overall look is similar. As far as concept, our work doesn't relate much.